The purpose of disentangled representation learning is to model the key factors that affect the form of data， so that the change of a key factor only causes the change of data on a certain feature， while the other features are not affected. It is conducive to face the challenge of machine learning in model interpretability， object generation and operation， zero-shot learning and other issues. Therefore， disentangled representation learning always be a research hotspot in the field of machine learning. Starting from the history and motives of disentangled representation learning， the research status and applications of disentangled representation learning were summarized， the invariance， reusability and other characteristics of disentangled representation learning were analyzed， and the research on the factors of variation via generative entangling， the research on the factors of variation with manifold interaction， and the research on the factors of variation using adversarial training were introduced， as well as the latest research trends such as a Variational Auto-Encoder （VAE） named β-VAE were introduced. At the same time， the typical applications of disentangled representation learning were shown， and the future research directions were prospected.